


Strength is Oddly Relative

by Jen (ConsultingWriters)



Series: The Earpiece Collection [5]
Category: James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M, bond is complete idiot, i fixed them, q is so strong, some sexual content, with difficulty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriters/pseuds/Jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond left. Q is now beginning to heal, where Bond seems unable to. </p><p>
  <i>Bond discovers that Q disconnected their private line, when he returns to MI6. He tries to contact Q, just Q, and can’t. He is met with eloquent silence.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He cannot deny how much that silence hurts.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strength is Oddly Relative

**Author's Note:**

> And another section. Jesus Christ, I haven't stopped writing. My head hurts, and is spinning with fic, absolutely without ceasing. Oh my lord.
> 
> Bond is a very strong man, but Q is too, and in a drastically different way... I love these characters, and despite them fighting back something CHRONIC, I've fixed things. Ish. Sort-of. 
> 
> A NOTE: I have mentioned in previous points in this series that I'm playing with tenses. Here I'm taking it to a new level; while others were subtle effect-based ones, this is playing with the entire basic tense of a story to suit purpose. Which means in practise, that every single verb has been carefully placed in either present or past tense - present for anything concerning Q/Bond, and past for anything with other people.
> 
> In most places, the sections are bracketed off. But there is a large swathe of the middle where the tense jumps erratically, and I'm hoping it works. It's an experiment, an augmentation of my previous ideas... WE SHALL SEE!
> 
> Enjoy :)

“ _Bond, at some stage you are going to have to explain how it is possible that you_ always _end up under heavy gunfire, no matter what mission,_ ” Q tells him. Bond gives a strange snarl, and leaps over the edge of a building, hoping to land on the next one along.

He doesn’t quite manage it. Instead, he ends up slipping off the edge of the next building along, dangling like bait as people take potshots at him. He looks down quickly, dust and rubble springing up in a cloud around him as they impact the building’s side; a fairly long way down, but not unmanageable.

He pushes himself away from the building edge, dropping a dozen or so feet onto the canopied roof of a market stall below. The canopy breaks the somewhat awkward fall; he rolls off it, falls to the ground below and instantly starts to run. The assailants above shoot into the crowd, causing absolute chaos, easy to hide in.

Q gives a long-suffering sigh. “ _Motorbike to your left_ ,” he says reluctantly. He had always hated seeing Bond on motorbikes, ‘death-traps’, he had called them. Bond smiles invisibly to himself as he revs up the motorbike, and darts out into sun baked streets.

Q guides him through streets, getting him out of the pedestrian areas as fast as possible. Interestingly, nobody seems to be following him. “ _I had decoys ready. I’m getting rather accustomed to you entirely ignoring the mission brief_ ,” Q notes drily. Bond laughs, and allows Q to guide him into a safe location. “ _Excellent. The hotel opposite has a reservation under your name. Stay for the evening, return to the airport in the morning, your flight is at 14.40. Try not to miss it. Contact R when you land, there will be a formal debrief as soon as you’re over your jetlag. Congratulations on a successful mission. Over and out._ ”

“Q…”

There is silence.

\---

Bond discovers that Q disconnected their private line, when he returns to MI6. He tries to contact Q, just Q, and can’t. He is met with eloquent silence.

He cannot deny how much that silence hurts.

\---

He used his leave strategically; to give them both a clean break, make it easier for both of them to adapt. He moved his belongings out of the flat in one sweep, no trace of himself remaining, nothing to cling to that would remind either of them and continue to hurt, festering in the wounds of their relationship.

Q smiles at him, and Bond smirks back, and there are absolutely no cracks in either person’s façade. They know each other better than their own shadows, but they are professional liars. It is only too easy to hide.

\---

“What the hell is this?” Q asks, rolling his eyes and groaning slightly at the sight of some rather knackered equipment. “Superb, that will waste a little more of my time, thank you.”

Bond stands there, watching Q. Q doesn’t look at him. He hasn’t spent any time alone with Bond since Bond had left, which wasn’t overwhelmingly surprising, if they were honest with one another. He had left abruptly, hadn’t given any explanation, and then disappeared for two weeks. It was about a month now. They could both give exact times and dates, if pressed, but avoided the question for fear of giving the answer.

“Yes?” Q asks when Bond doesn’t leave, looking up at Bond through eyes that are just fractionally too dark, just echoing bruises.

Bond shakes his head, shrugs lightly, walks out of Q-branch without looking back. Q doesn’t watch him leave.

\---

Bond used two weeks of his life drinking himself catatonic, and fucking literally anything that crossed his path. Every conscious moment now is drinking, or working. He is a perfectly functioning mask, with nothing inside.

The terrible thing is that Q now is too, only Q is beginning to flicker back to life where Bond cannot.

\---

Bond’s next mission took him to Paris. He always enjoyed Paris assignments; they were very simple, compared to the usual mess of communication fadeouts, no foreign assistance, usually a struggle to comprehend the dialect of the requisite country. Paris meant help from Parisian police and DCRI - French internal intelligence services – when things turned to hell, as they usually seemed to.

He was more than a little surprised at the appearance of Elise. She was a French agent, naturally, with her own agenda and eyes like machine guns. She was lethal and beautiful, dark-haired and slim, and wore her sexuality like her cloying perfume.

Bond had seduced her – or more accurately, they had seduced each other – in a matter of minutes. They had been on twin assignments in New Guinea at the time, and both had more than amply fulfilled their mission briefs; they went off radar for two days together, after which they hadn’t met for another nine months. The pattern had repeated itself, in a small village in Provence. And in Naples. And in Marseilles.

They didn’t know much about one another, and they didn’t especially want to. Bond was almost entirely certain that her name wasn’t actually Elise. It wasn’t important, after all. The point was merely to enjoy one another for a few days at a time, to blank out the world, to not bother with lies or pretence or affection.

They had something of an understanding, by this stage. Neither would hesitate to kill the other if the need arose. It was merely mutually convenient.

“Good evening, James,” her treacle voice oozed, and Bond felt something stir in him despite most of his better judgement.

“Elise,” he said, flicking on his most charming smile. “A pleasure.”

“You’re still alive,” she commented with a slightly black laugh, tossing her black hair back, batting her heavily made-up lashes at him. “It’s been a while, I haven’t seen you since Marseilles. What is that, eighteen months?”

“Give or take,” Bond replied, impressed at her memory; he calculated quickly, assuming it must have been. Marseilles had been about two months before Q. Eighteen months was an accurate enough guess. “You’re looking divine as always, Elise.”

“And you,” she replied, her smile like a jagged knife.

“ _Bond, could you please concentrate?_ ” asks a voice in his ear, mild, just a hint of irritation. “ _Your mark is to your left, and if you keep on flirting, you run the risk of losing him_.”

“I have business to attend to,” Bond said in his low rumble, and Elise smiled coyly.

“I understand,” she replied, and she did. They were probably working on rather similar initiatives; either that, or she had done what she did in Marseilles, and had logged when he entered the country and met him accordingly. He had honestly been rather flattered.

Spies occupied quite a small world. It was easy to find the same people, if you worked on roughly the same side, or even if you didn’t. The only problem was that you were likely to end up killing one another, if you met too frequently. Bond honestly knew more people in various European intelligence agencies than he did the agents in MI6; they were always posted in separate places, always apart.

Elise, however, was somebody he had met just a little too frequently now. Her interest was, perhaps, too defined. She would need to be watched now.

“ _Bond, you have not moved,_ ” Q points out, now beginning to get genuinely irate.

“Good to see you,” Bond told Elise, brushing a kiss against her cheek; she slipped a hand to his head, whispering in his ear:

“Room 19,” she breathed, and lets him go. Bond smiled, inclined his head, watched as she sipped her Black Russian and gave him a languid wink. Bond ducked away from her. The moment his back is turned, the smile he painted for her began to dissolve.

“I wasn’t flirting,” he tells Q, starting the track of the room that would lead him, ultimately, to his mark.

“ _You were becoming unduly distracted, then,_ ” Q retorts with slight venom, and something inside Bond flinches very slightly. “ _We are here for a reason_.”

“Understood,” Bond replies. He slides to the bar, orders a martini “ _Have you ever actually tried it stirred, Bond?_ ” and settles back with it, making small talk with the barman, who is a struggling actor and in no way important to the mission. It does, however, give him an in to talk to the man next to him, who is nursing a Rusty Nail and looking a little the worse for wear.

At some stage during their conversation, he neatly picked the man’s pocket, ordering him another drink in the process. At that rate, the literally wouldn’t remember the next morning, let alone have the vaguest idea of who stole his identification papers and a rather vital hard drive from his interior jacket pocket.

Bond was mildly irritated. This was a job any agent could have managed.

Room 19 swam at the edge of his consciousness, tempting him. She was a perfect tonic, a lovely way to forget. He hadn’t fucked anyone since returning from his leave, not given that he was hooked back to MI6 most of the time. He couldn’t quite conscience doing that to Q.

Yet, Q was no longer his responsibility.

“Target acquired,” Bond relays to Q-branch.

“ _Received_ ,” Q returns simply. He doesn’t even add his usual sarcasm, the commentary on how Bond could have done that in half the time if he paid attention, nothing. It is vaguely uncomfortable.

Bond barely made it out of the building before Elise finds him again. “I heard about you and the MI6 Quartermaster,” she said directly. Bond’s face remains impassive, and there is no sound from Q-branch; he has no doubt that he is no longer audible to anybody else, in any case.

“What did you hear?” Bond asked her, staring at her with terrifying ferocity.

“What’s she like?” Elise asked conversationally. “I’d enjoy meeting her, she must be the first female Q in history…”

“He,” James interrupts, and her eyes widen, and Q gives a slight groan in his ear.

“ _Bond, not your most tactful move. If French intelligence really believe I’m female, I’d prefer not to disabuse them of that notion,_ ” Q sighs, the eye roll audible.

“Interesting,” Elise murmured, studying James through new eyes. “I thought your Quartermaster was male, yes, but when I heard about your involvement… well. I suppose that explains why you don’t want to come back to my room…”

“We are no longer involved,” Bond said simply. Q is completely silent in his ear, but Bond can see him, the bow-string of his body in tension, arching in a delicate curve over his computers, restraining himself from pointless responses.

Elise smiled, and kissed him with breathtaking finesse. She had always been glorious, delicious, perfect at the very delicate art of sex.

“ _Are you going to sleep with her?_ ” Q asks, in a precarious tone. Bond hears his voice, and cannot breathe, and knows what he has to do.

He kissed Elise again, deeply, passionately. He poured everything into it, hands roaming her body, pulling her into the shadows against the side of the building and letting their twin warmths blow cascades of steamed breath into the cold night.

They eventually split, Elise breathless, Bond taught, waiting for the response, for the words he already knew would come.

“ _Agent 007 is going offline. Bond, contact Q-branch when you’re done_ ” Q tells him in a fathomless voice, and signs off.

That was certainly not what he had expected.

\---

Bond returns to Q-branch a handful of days later. He feels like shit. He is uncomfortably aware of the moronic mistake he has made, and while Elise had certainly passed the time, he is more than prepared for the repercussions.

“Welcome back,” Q says lightly. “Let’s see what you’ve trashed of my budget this time around.”

“Q, about Elise…”

“I asked about my budget, not your sex life,” Q says with a perfect blend of weariness and distaste, and it is as though they were never together. 

Bond doesn’t know what to say, far less what to do.

Bond places the entirely intact pieces of weaponry and kit on the table. He walks out without a further word. This entire situation has gotten out of hand.

\---

Eve found Bond almost catatonic.

“Jesus, you’re a mess,” she said, sounding equal parts pitying and condescending. Bond considered throwing something at her, but was pretty certain his hand-eye coordination was past the point of no return. Instead, he settled for a rather inelegant groan, that rattled in his chest, and strangled his breath.

She sank down next to him, and placed a gentle hand on his cheek. “Bond, I don’t know what happened, and I don’t want to know. Fix it.”

“I did do it for a reason, y’know,” he slurred, and Eve sighed. She was silent for a moment. Bond was ridiculously stubborn, they both were, but it was like watching a train crash in slow motion. Even M had noticed, and he wasn’t renowned for noticing the intricacies of interpersonal relationships in his staff.

“He’s with somebody else,” she said softly.

Eve could honestly say she had never seen another human being sober up that fast. “What?” Bond asked, voice tense and unbelievably brittle.

“One of the Q-branch kids,” Eve said apologetically, and Bond felt the bottom fall from his brain, sending him spiralling. “Bond, go to him. _Now_. Jesus, if you could behave like adults, or god forbid communicate like normal people, you might have a goddamn chance of not killing each other.”

Eve doesn’t understand. They work through breaking things. They don’t know anything else.

\---

“Q, put me on a private line,” Bond asks, orders, pleads. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but Eve slapped him and told him to stop being such a self-pitying idiot, so he guesses he should probably get on with it.

“ _Why?_ ” Q asks, sounding intensely suspicious. Bond can’t exactly blame him, he would exactly the same under the circumstances.

“Please?” Bond tries. There is a moment of stillness, before Q sighs exaggeratedly, evidently irritated. It is a low-traffic mission, thankfully; he is mostly just lying in stakeout in a freezing cold warehouse. He had intended to have this conversation in person, but as with everything, plans have had to be quite rapidly adapted.

Bond listens to Q typing, and all external interference is suddenly blotted out. “ _Yes?_ ”

“You’re with somebody else.”

“ _You were first,_ ” Q retorts, and Bond winces slightly. “ _Why is it your business?_ ”

Bond is silent for a moment, before releasing a caught sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“ _Good,_ ” Q returns instantly. “ _Is that all, or can I get on with my job now?_ ”

“No, that isn’t all,” Bond tells him sharply. “You shouldn’t be with him.”

“ _Fuck off, that’s absolutely none of your business_ ,” Q tells him with knifepoint precision. “ _Bond, what do you actually want_?”

“I miss you,” Bond tells him, and is shocked by the sound of his own vulnerability. His voice is inches away from breaking. He is not accustomed to this at all, not in the slightest, not to confessing any form of upset or anger or hurt. He doesn’t understand what the hell is different about Q, but there is something, and he needs Q more than he can say.

There is no sound from Q’s end.

“… _Bond, you can’t do this,_ ” Q murmurs. “ _You can’t leave, and then reappear just because it suits you. I needed you back weeks ago. I kept hoping you would, I would have done fucking anything. You left._ ”

“Q, I am a lot older than you. I’m a double-oh agent, who probably should have died in action years ago. I also can’t keep you safe…”

“ _Don’t you dare patronise me, I can look after myself,_ ” Q snaps.

“And what if I _want_ to be able to look after you?” Bond roars back. Something in his head notes surprise at the vehemence of his response, but he can’t bring himself to care by this stage. “I’ve seen too many people I care about die, and it’s fucking _killing_ me that I can’t guarantee that you won’t join them. I can’t watch you die.”

The silence is literally unbelievable. Bond is tempted to murmur Q’s name, just to check if he’s still there, just to hold onto him in whatever way he can.

“ _That’s what this is about?_ ” Q asks, sounding impossibly young.

Bond doesn’t bother replying. Q already knows. Both listen to the sound of the other’s breathing, light and frantic and deep and controlled.

“ _All of this is because you don’t want to see me die_?” Q asks again, a little more forcefully. “ _Do you think it would be easier for me to watch you die, or…?_ ”

“I didn’t say that. I left because I’m entirely wrong for you, and because I’m selfish enough to not want to see you get hurt because of me, or because I can’t stop it,” Bond explains, with his customary succinctness.

“ _…And arrogant enough to think you know what I want,_ ” Q adds, without missing a beat. Bond concedes on that front without argument. Q’s sigh is fractured. “ _So what now, Bond?_ ” he asks, and Bond feels like a raw nerve; everything movement, word, breath is painful.

“I don’t know,” Bond says, quite honestly. “I made a mistake.”

“ _You should have spoken to me about it rather than behaving like a petulant child,_ ” Q says, trying to make his voice sting, and not doing a tremendously good job of it.

“I’m sorry,” Bond manages. “I am so sorry, Q. I’m sorry I left, and I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’m sorry I made such a fucking mess of this.”

“ _Yes. You did._ ”

Q thinks for a moment. He wants to say many things. He wants to say _I need to think_ or _I don’t know if I trust you_ or _what if this happens again_ and _I don’t ever want to see you hurt either you idiot_. He wants to say _let’s see what happens_ and _let’s try again when we’re ready_ and all those other measured statements intelligent, well-balanced couples issue when they’ve done something like this.

They have no time. Because Bond could die, and Q could die, and that is something they know too well. Because their lives are far too short and far too fragile. Because Bond can never keep him safe, and Q can never keep him. They are virulent, and dangerous, and cannot afford hesitation. They hurt each other far more than most, but there is something to be said for the immediacy and passion and brilliance of being forced into a corner with somebody else and fighting for whatever time you have available.

Q breathes steadily for several minutes, and stares at the whitewashed ceiling of his office. He doesn’t want to think about whether this is the right thing, at the right time. He goes by what he wants. 

“ _Come home safe, James_ ,” he says quietly, and closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> *exhales*
> 
> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed, hope the style works, et cetera. Comments etc are my crack. I'm in AWE of the support this series has garnered, it's truly amazing, I love you all so much!!!
> 
> Take care now :)


End file.
